One week ago it was 113 degrees, the hottest day ever in recorded history in Los Angeles. Yesterday it rained all day causing the power in our apartment to go out for the entire afternoon and part of the evening. Today, my fingers are cold and I am bundled in a terry cloth robe. By the end of the week it will be in the upper 70s and sunny again.
This is the way that Los Angeles changes seasons. It has trouble making up it's mind one way or the other; like me trying to find an outfit to wear to an event.
I went for a walk yesterday in the rain, around the reservoir, with my friend Melissa and her dog Emma. For once I felt like I looked like the other people who frequent that 2 mile path since almost everyone is either jogging or pushing a stroller or walking their dogs or doing all three at once. I felt like saying, "See I have a dog too! I do belong! I do belong!"
By the time I got home in the afternoon and sat down in front of my laptop with the intention of beginning another day scouring the internet for a job...the power went out. LA is unaccustomed to the rain. Power goes out. People suddenly forget how to drive, frequently confusing the accelerator and brake pedals. Burly, mean-looking men ride their red ladies' beach cruiser bicycles in the middle of the very busy La Brea Blvd. People wander around aimlessly in fugue states perplexed by how they have been transported to a place that looks like their city but somehow just wetter.
So I spent the afternoon reading. Reading on the couch, in our bedroom, in a hot bath. All the while feeling nervous that I need to be finding a job. Is there even a job out there that is right for me? How will I find it? How will I know?
I feel like I am a contestant on a pre-MTV dating game. Brianna loves walks in the park and moonlight strolls on the beach. She loves going to see live music but likes to be home and curled up with a good book by 11pm (9pm in truth but this is a dating game and no one tells the whole truth on those anyway). She is politically liberal. Brianna hates machismo and when men wear front pleated pants.
Only the ultimate prize in this dating game is a paycheck and a happy work environment instead of a one-night stand everlasting love.
Yesterday was six months since George died. It won't be long before he has been dead longer than he was alive. Once we pass the 29th week from his birth/death date I will be living in the grief about his death for longer than I was ever living in the joy about his life.
How unforgiving time is. No matter how much I want to dig in my heals and refuse to be dragged along with it, I can't. No amount of tears or pleading slows down the constant march forward and so I am left craning my neck backward in the hopes of catching a glimpse of what I once had.
The farther away into the present time drags me the more obscure my past becomes and the more events begin to coalesce.
This...
That time I got pregnant and when we found out he was a boy and when we decided on the name George Ellsworth after our fathers and the first time I felt him move and when we found out he was sick and when we were in the hospital and when I took all that medication and the moment we really realized that we were beyond saving him and when I got really sick and when we had to make the choice to not send him to the nicu and when we held him and he was live and when he died and when we realized he was never coming back.
Inevitably will become something more like this...
That time in my life I had a son named George and he died.
I want his life to occupy more of my timeline. Instead as time stretches out to the right, the space his life occupies on that line shrinks and the space his death occupies expands.
It is all wrong.
His death should have never occupied any space on my timeline at all.
